For the Greater Good
by RiptideIVLIVS
Summary: The year is 1994, Halloween night, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and Harry Potter has been deemed the Fourth Champion by the Goblet of Fire in the Triwizard Tournament. But what if that was not all that it did? What if-it summoned a mysterious parcel with a letter written by a mysterious man under the alias "T.R.L."?
1. Chapter 1

**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**

**Halloween Night, 1994**

* * *

_"Harry Potter."_

Harry sat there, aware that every head in the Great Hall had turned to look at him. He was stunned. He felt numb. He was surely dreaming. He had not heard correctly.

There was no applause. A buzzing, as though of angry bees, was starting to fill the Hall; some students were standing up to get a better look at Harry as he sat, frozen, in his seat.

Up at the top table, Professor McGonagall had got to her feet and swept past Ludo Bagman and Professor Karkaroff to whisper urgently to Professor Dumbledore, who bent his ear toward her, frowning slightly.

Harry turned to Ron and Hermione; beyond them, he saw the long Gryffindor table all watching him, openmouthed.

"I didn't put my name in," Harry said blankly. "You know I didn't."

Both of them stared just as blankly back.

At the top table, Professor Dumbledore had straightened up, nodding to Professor McGonagall.

"Harry Potter!" he called again. "Harry! Up here, if you please!"

"Go on," Hermione whispered, giving Harry a slight push.

Harry got to his feet, trod on the hem of his robes, and stumbled slightly. He set off up the gap between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables. It felt like an immensely long walk; the top table didn't seem to be getting any nearer at all, and he could feel hundreds and hundreds of eyes upon him, as though each were a searchlight. The buzzing grew louder and louder. After what seemed like an hour, he was right in front of Dumbledore, feeling the stares of all the teachers upon him.

"Well . . . through the door, Harry," said Dumbledore. He was not smiling.

But just as Harry was beginning to walk away from the headmaster, his mind still frozen, the Goblet of Fire blasted again.

_Oh, what now?_ Harry thought hopelessly.

The flames burning from blue to red, unlike the last four times, was abnormally huge. To the Great Hall's shock, it did not bring another piece of parchment. It was a parcel, with a letter strapped to it.

Dumbledore, in a state of most befuddlement, wand in hand, approached the package that the Goblet had summoned. The headmaster noticed that it was a Howler.

Throwing a cautious glance at the students around the Hall, concerned as whether they should hear what it had to say, decided to stake his chances as you never really did have many choices when it came to Howlers.

"Professor Dumbledore **—**" warned Professor McGonagall.

He nodded at her to trust him that he would not allow any harm the Howler could bring. It most probably wouldn't, but better safe than sorry.

He opened the letter.

_"To Professor Dumbledore and the population of Hogwarts,"_ a man spoke, in a voice that Harry found strangely familiar, but couldn't quite remember who it reminded him of.

_"This may be hard to be believed, but as of this moment, I am writing this letter to you from the year two-thousand-and-sixteen."_

Around the Great Hall, gasps resounded across the room. "Is this a prank?" "Come off it!" "Get on with the Tournament!" "What is going on?" were a the surrounding heckles the students threw around.

Harry, however, was shaken out of his shock. The happenings of time travel were no shock to Harry; after all, _he_ had time traveled himself, with the Time-Turner Hermione had used all throughout the Third Year yesteryear. But the length of the travel was what astounded him. _The year twenty-sixteen?_ Harry thought. What business would someone _twenty-two years_ from now have to do with their time?

_"I know this sounds hard to believe," _the Howler kept saying, _"but it is the truth. I encourage every wizard and witch with any sense of authority to truth-check any lie this letter may show. I did not do this for kicks and giggles, but as a warning."_

_A warning?_ Harry asked himself. _For what? For the future?"_

_"The Triwizard Tournament must _not _happen."_

Another wave of gasps sounded throughout the Great Hall, followed by shouts of indignation and fury.

_"That is to say, the chronological version of the Triwizard Tournament that was fated to happen, had I not intervened, mustn't be let come."_

Harry saw Professor Dumbledore stroking his beard, his attention completely on the Howler.

_"Unless you are up for the torture and murder of innocent people."_

The deathly quiet that followed the room seemed to last an eternity.

_"I'm not going to pretend that what I'm doing is legal, and within my rights." _the man's voice had a calm acceptance tone. _"By all means, it's not. Not only am I breaking Wizarding law by interfering with time, I am also messing with forces that shouldn't be messed with. I know I am dealing with a double-edged sword, and by seeing the results, in my present, of what I'm doing may bring, I may come to regret it. Hell, by sending this parcel along with this letter, a possible consequence may be that I'm not born."_

Harry's eyebrows went higher into his forehead. Why would his actions cause him not to exist? Would the consequences be that his mother and father wouldn't be together?

_"But that, ladies and gentlemen, depends on the actions of you. A message to the Ministry: don't bother trying to find me in your present time. I didn't exist in 1994. I know full well I cannot tell you to simply cancel the Tournament. Not when the magical contracts have already bound four students of three schools."_

Harry felt the buzzing again as some people turned to look at him, and felt his face burn.

_"To do this, I found the Goblet of Fire from my time and took it."_

People gasped and some even whistled admiringly at the nerve of the voice of the future.

_"It is October 30 in my time right now, a day before Halloween night. I enchanted the Goblet to release the parcel after the Four Champions names' rise out of the Goblet. This, of course, would never have happened in my time as there is no Triwizard Tournament in 2016. For it to work, the parcel should've been there 22 years ago immediately after the four parchments came out. So I enchanted a Time Turner to turn 192,720 times. Exactly twenty-two years. Therefore, the spell would command the Goblet of Fire from your time instead of mine."_

At this, the Ministry workers and the Hogwarts staff, along with Karkaroff and Madame Maxime all looked astounded. Magic like that had never even been heard of.

_"But sending this letter into your time was not the hardest thing I had to do."_

Professors McGonagall and Sprout both looked at each other, baffled. This young man was seriously saying that manipulating with time, the most untrustworthy branch of magic, possibly even more than Divination, was not the hardest thing the man from the future did.

_"In that parcel I sent, there are four books. They're all numbered as, Year Four, Year Five, Year Six, and Year Seven. To save innocent lives, and end the Dark Side before it reckons the Wizarding world as we know it."_

Harry could see a strange gleam in Professor Dumbledore's eyes, as if all his suspicions had been proved correct.

_"To prove my authenticity, the Year Four book will initially begin in the past, slowly reaching its way into the present, and then to the future. The grim future that would've brought pain, death, and misery through the magical and non-magical community of England, had I not intervened._

_"And please, don't see this as saving. It's not. It's a warning. Telling the world what will happen in the future does not make that future any less approachable. This was all I could do. My present and your future, will still depend on the actions of the past, which is your now._

_"And Harry?"_

All throughout the Great Hall, every eye turned turned to him. Harry felt a sickening feeling in his heart.

_"I hope you can find it in you to forgive me. But I know that if you could've prematurely known, you would've agreed if it meant saving innocent lives."_

_Signed,  
T.R.L."_

And the letter ended, and fell to the ground.

"What was that?"

Many heads turned to the room. They hadn't realized that by Professor McGonagall's orders, Hagrid had brought the three champions back.

It was Cedric Diggory who had asked, but all three looked confused.

"Are wee getting details of ze contest later?" Fleur Delacour asked around, mindlessly flipping her hair back.

"No, Miss Delacour," replied Dumbledore, looking down at the mysterious man's letter, T.R.L. "I'm afraid that, in our present predicament, the Triwizard Tournament must be put on hold."

_"What?" _Ludo Bagman yelped, waddling over to the Hogwarts headmaster. "Dumbledore, you can't cancel the Triwizard Tournament out of some, some silly schoolboy prank!" Bagman tried to play it off in a joking manner, though he sounded nervous.

"I don't believe this could be a prank, Ludo. _Accio Parcel." _The parcel flew from the ground and into Dumbledore's hands. Tied around the parcel was indeed, a Time-Turner. This one however, was unlike any he had seen before. He untied it and left it on the Hogwarts' Staff table beside his now empty dinner plate, and opened the parcel. Inside, as T.R.L. had said, were four books, piled one on top of the other.

But what he hadn't wrote on the Howler, was that a second letter was there, addressed to him. It said:

_**Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore  
**__**For your eyes only**_

In a moment of hesitation, he left the letter in the parcel. He grabbed the first book on top and took it out. The cover was orange, with rhombus-patterns, and a black spine. In the spine, the words **Year Four** in orange bold was written.

"I believe," Dumbledore said, shooting a bang up in the air with his wand, silencing the gossiping students, "that we must first see if what this . . . T.R.L. sent us, is the truth."

"Oh, Dumbledore! Please, we mustn't-"

"I agree with Albus."

Bagman turned to face Mr. Crouch, who since he had arrived here, had looked frail and sick.

"Let's hear this . . . who was it? 'T.R.L.'? I suppose it can't hurt, if it just a mindless prank?"

No one expected Barty Crouch, a man defined by his strictness for rules, to agree to such a thing as this; in fact, Dumbledore analyzed his behavior as . . . most unusual. For Bartemius Crouch, that is.

No one noticed Mad-Eye Moody looking at Crouch, intently, unblinking . . .

"I believe judging this based on the first chapter would suffice as to whether we are being tricked, or told the truth. Anyone care to disagree?"

No one did. The idea that a set of books detailing the horrible future ahead had been sent at this precisely moment, suffice it to say, made them on edge.

"You four," Professor McGonagall called the four champions. "To where you were seated, if you please."

Throwing a confused look at Harry, the three champions went back to their seats; Fleur, with her Beauxbatons classmates in the Ravenclaw table; Krum, to Slytherin; and Cedric to his House table, Hufflepuff.

"Professor Dumbledore - ?" asked Harry.

The headmaster nodded at Harry to the Gryffindor table. "If you will, Harry."

Harry nodded and headed back, knowing full well the accusing glares the other three Houses were throwing his way. From the corner of his eye, he could see the other tables filling in to the other three champions on what had just happened.

His House mates were just staring at him, openmouthed. Hermione immediately grabbed his hand, and tightened it reassuringly. Harry noticed that Ron couldn't quite seem to be able to look at him in the eye; he also noticed his hands under the table were clenched.

"Now then," Dumbledore said, opening the book. **"The Goblet of Fire . . ."**


	2. An apology

An apology

After several days of thinking and attempts at thinking of the story plot, I've come to the realization that this story can't and won't make sense.

Harry vs. Voldemort: Obviously, if Harry and Dumbledore find out that the end of the Third Task is a trap and it leads to the resurrection of Lord Voldemort, Harry will never touch the Triwizard Cup that will take him there. This would eventually lead to Voldemort winning, since there could be no way in which Voldemort would carry Harry's blood, which means that even if Harry surrendered himself to Voldemort, he wouldn't survive it as since Voldemort in this storyline wouldn't have Lily's protection to keep Harry from dying. I could go the easy route and invent new ways in which Harry could defeat Lord Voldemort; however, as since this is a fanfiction, I want to challenge myself into what J. K. Rowling would've written had her characters had a chance to learn of the future. These are her characters, and as a lover of this story, I wish to write them as loyally and canonically authentic as though she had written this story herself.

Bill and Fleur: I find it extremely hard to imagine Bill Weasley falling in love at Fleur Delacour in The Goblet of Fire. Obviously I was going to have him show up to read the books, and yes, Bill is a man who finds thrill in adventure, being a curse-breaker and all, but I don't think his parents raised him to ignore the blatant and disrespectful way Fleur treats people before Harry 'saved' her sister Gabrielle. And since they'd read about it, obviously Harry wouldn't save Gabrielle anymore, and Fleur's personality would not change, therefore I find it hardly unlikely that Bill would fall for her.

Remus and Tonks: As Since Remus and Tonks do not know each other before Dumbledore reinstated the Order of the Phoenix, no romantic feelings bloom between each other. Therefore, should Tonks read what Lupin's attitude would be towards his family in the beginning, I find it doubtful she would still fall for him. It makes more sense to have her read it when her feelings for Remus are already there, not when they're still strangers.

Ron and Hermione: With both of them reading one another's jealousy starting from The Goblet of Fire to The Half-Blood Prince, I believe it unlikely that the two would fall in love if they heard it beforehand. Without Ron discovering his feelings towards Hermione by seeing her relationship with Krum, and Hermione discovering her feelings towards Ron by seeing his crush on Fleur, and experiencing these feelings by themselves, the chances of them being together is slimmer.

Harry and Ginny: The same can be said, more for Harry than Ginny, if anything. Harry only sees Ginny as a sister until the last two books, but it is only in book five in which his opinion of her shifts to the better, when Ginny stops being a lovesick fangirl and shows Harry her true self. That in itself, makes Harry respect her more and view her differently. But at this point in Fourth Year, when Ginny is still unable to have a conversation with Harry, and Harry not having the respect he has for her yet, the chances of both of them being together is even fainter than Ron and Hermione's.

And yes, keeping the canon couples together is essential, as I am trying to write it in the way that can parallel J. K. Rowling's.

By no means, I am not giving up on this story. My choice will be to simply have it set on Harry's fifth year, by which the books arrive thanks to the Room of Requirement. I am sincerely sorry for tampering your hopes up on this story, but to make it up to you, I will try to improve and work on a better storyline than the one I thought I could make work. As of now, I am writing the story, with as much as authentic dialogue between the characters to the best of my creative writing. I will post a notice when I publish this story, then delete this story, as it would only make me look back at it with regret.

Apologies and promises for good content,

RiptideIVLIVS.


End file.
